And this is what I want to remember about Little Bug at 28 months old!

I enrolled Little Bug in a Tumbling Class and she LOVES it. It meets on Thursday mornings for 45 minutes. When I picked her up after class she told me, “I want to stay at Tumbling Class!” She did not want to leave. I am so happy she has the opportunity since we decided to not put her in preschool until age 3.

I went to get Little Bug after naptime and found her like this in her crib. She said, “I’m just having a picnic with my Pooh Bears!” She is very much into “picnics” and “tea parties” this month! It is so adorable to see her lining her “friends” up for picnics and tea parties. She will do this during Independent Playtime a lot, too.

Little Bug discovered Play-Doh this month! Little Bug seems bored with her toys lately and I think it is because they are “baby toys”. She will play with her baby doll stuff, her kitchen and play food. She still LOVES books and she enjoys playing outside and going up to the park. I think she is starting to show her “crafty side” because she is really into coloring and Play-Doh.

In my spare time (haha) I would like to find educational activities that I could do with Little Bug. I have a “Learning Box” on the kitchen counter where I put keep things in there that I want to intentionally teach Little Bug. I worked with her on puzzle skills, color skills and I have some magnetic ABCs in there to work on the alphabet. We are still working on ABCs, and her puzzle and coloring skills have greatly improved since we started working on them. However, I would really like to incorporate some learning activities into our daily schedule to intentionally teach ABCs and the basic preschool skills.

Anybody have some good resources that I could use to find some learning activities to do with her??

We renewed our Zoo membership this past weekend and went for the first time as a family of four with some friends from Dave’s work! As the weather cools, I know we will be going pretty often. Little Bug loves the zoo and was so excited to be back!

Little Bug watched NO TV from birth until 2 years old. And when I say none I mean none. Except for one day. I was so sick last winter with a cold. I just wanted to sit. Well, Little Bug, at the age of 18 months old, did not just sit. So I popped in a DVD of Dr. Seuss I had bought on clearance for after Little Bug turned 2. I turned it on and we lay in front of the TV for about 10 minutes and watched it. That was all Little Bug would sit still for! She wanted to be up and playing and was not really interested in the TV at all.

About a month ago I started letting Little Bug watch the show “Word World”. The show is very educational. It is all about the alphabet and building words. She LOVES it. She asks me, “May I watch my show?” about a million times a day now. I don’t want her watching TV every day and I certainly do not want to fall into the trap of the “TV babysitter”. I could very easily fall into that trap because when Word World is on, Little Bug is quiet and glued to the TV. She usually busts out crying when the show is over. I am training her now to not ask for another show when it goes off but to instead say with a happy voice, “Thank you, Mommy, for letting me watch my show!” Today we finally made progress. I let her watch a Word World show after her nap and when it was over there were no tears and she thanked me for letting her watch her show.

If I was SuperMom I would LOVE to incorporate learning activities that tie into the words she learns on Word World. Maybe one day I could get that all together, but not these days.

And here she is again at another picnic with her friends! So adorable!

Little Bug loves to go in our closet and play with my shoes. She tries them all on and prances around!

Little Bug got her flu shot at Sweet Pea’s 2 month check up. She was a brave girl! She was weighed before her shot and she weighed in at 28.5 pounds!

Oh my Little Bug. Just when I think she can’t possibly get any cuter, she does. I know she is my daughter so I have a biased opinion, but this kid has such a wonderful personality. She is so sweet and loving. When her Daddy comes home from work she will tell him, “I missed you today, Daddy!”. She will tell me, even after we have spent the entire day together, that she misses me, too. She LOVES being around people and she LOVES her family.

This morning at breakfast she was saying, “I have a Mommy and a Daddy!” I told her, “And we love you soooooooooooo much!” Then she said, “And I have a Grandma and Grandpa that love me sooooooo much!” She is one loved little girl.

We are working on first time obedience. Some days she obeys the first time and others days, she does not. It’s a work in progress. The consequences are the same and it breaks her heart when she gets in trouble. She always wants us to hug her and love on her afterwards. I know now is the time to mold and shape a heart of obedience in her and it is my #1 goal with her. I know if she can hit age 3 with an obedient heart, she will be on the right path. We haven’t had any long periods of misbehavior since before Sweet Pea’s birth and for that I am grateful.

Little Bug is such a good big sister. She always wants to give Sweet Pea a hug and kiss before bedtime. She will give Sweet Pea her paci without any prompting from me. She takes great pride in being able to help Sweet Pea in this way. I look forward to the days that Little Bug and Sweet Pea start playing together and interacting and create a very tight (I hope) sister bond between the two of them.

I can’t imagine my oldest daughter being any other child than Little Bug. She is my daughter, through and through. I love watching her grow up. There are some days I do miss her as a baby or young toddler, but overall, I love this stage we are in. She is learning so much, she is talking so much and she is so much fun every day.

Her language abilities astound me. She suddenly started speaking in complete complex sentences and I don’t really remember when all that started. She was talking the other day and I was just thinking, “She doesn’t talk like a baby anymore! She talks like a big girl!”

Little Bug is one very special little girl. I am so blessed to be her mother.

- Elaine